


It's Just a Shot Away

by Lucky107



Series: Only You (And You Alone) [7]
Category: Far Cry 5
Genre: Delirium, Eye Gouging, Gen, Graphic Description, Physical Abuse, Psychological Torture, Religious Imagery & Symbolism
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-26
Updated: 2018-05-26
Packaged: 2019-05-14 02:44:52
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,888
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14761094
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lucky107/pseuds/Lucky107
Summary: That primal survival tactic kicks into overdrive.





	It's Just a Shot Away

**Author's Note:**

> Featuring a brief cameo of my girl [Diana Rivera](https://lucky-107.tumblr.com/diana).

When Jacob warns Sunny over the radio that a hunting party is inbound, she _runs_.

It’s an instinctual choice driven by fear— _fight or flight_ —and she knows it’s futile because Jacob will catch her, no matter how far she runs, but that primal survival instinct kicks into overdrive.

Her attempt is cut short when a perfectly placed barbed arrow, the type intended to pierce through body armor, shreds the fabric of her cargo pants and skin. It embeds itself into her right knee and Sunny yowls as she crashes into the dirt.

The pain is so strong that it’s impossible not to aggravate it, no matter how hard she tries, wheezing and writhing.

There’s no Bliss on the arrow.

Everything remains perfectly clear and sharp in her mind— _especially_ the pain.

A hunter appears in her peripheral: a woman with stringy blonde hair, half-shaven, and a distinct burn that covers the entire left side of her face. She’s one of Jacob’s most trusted soldiers, Sunny knows, because she recognizes the blue cat-like eyes that peer down at her, predatory in every sense of the word.

“Looks like I win again, kitten,” the woman’s voice, thick from decades of smoking, purrs sadistically as she leers down at her victim. “Now, I’m only going to ask you this once: where’s the girl?”

The words barely register past the pain.

“I don’t… I don’t _know_ ,” Sunny hisses through grit teeth. “Roberta never—”

Seemingly without warning, the hunter rips the arrow out of Sunny’s knee and she screams herself hoarse at the pain of the barbs tearing up the skin.

“My, you _are_ a feisty one. I can see why Jacob likes you so much, but I’m not nearly as patient. I have no interest in the Father’s silly games of cat and mouse. My concern is that little girlfriend of yours, the archer, and I know you know where she is.”

 _The Wolf’s Den_.

But Sunny doesn’t say it.

She tries not to even _think_ it as Jess’ piercing blue eyes appear in her mind, hard and closely guarded.

Sunny had been so careless the first time she met Jacob Seed, allowing him to read her like an open book in the Grandview Hotel. It was a mistake that she couldn’t afford to make again, not now, not when it’s the safety of Jess and the Whitetails on the line.

The thought of failing them reignites the fire in Sunny’s heart.

Past the pain she manages a raspy, “Fuck you—”

 _For Jess_.

But the hunter steps down hard on Sunny’s right knee, right where the arrow came out, and the pain of the attack shoots through her body like an electrical current. Sunny bounces like a puppet on a string in her effort to defend herself, but fails to find the mental resources to do anything more than cry hoarsely.

She’s at her wit’s end with all of the physical torture.

The hunter fists the collar of Sunny’s shirt in a vain attempt to demand her attention, but her eyes are glossy and unseeing.

“Bitch killed my baby brother,” the hunter appeals with a snarl. “Where _is_ she, you little—”

“… You’ll have to _kill_ me.”

“If that’s how you want it—”

The barbed arrow that was once stuck in her knee comes out of nowhere and plucks Sunny’s right eye from her face, quick, like someone pulling off an adhesive bandage. Pain spots what remains of her vision and, somewhere, Sunny thinks she can hear herself screaming.

Everything begins to sound like a distant echo as the shock kicks in.

In seconds flat the forest is swallowed by darkness.

 

Sunny comes to with a start.

 _Alive_.

There’s firelight.

She would recognize the soft orange glow of a flame anywhere, but she doesn’t recognize the long, skinny shadows that it casts across her vision. Like blinds, but— _bars_.

Incessant mumbling, like the buzz of insects, drowns out the night’s ambient sounds and attacks her sensitive ears, coming from everywhere all at once. It’s impossible to collect a single cohesive thought past the onslaught of static noise, each string of words floating just beyond her reach.

There’s a pained groan.

Sunny thinks it’s her own.

“O-oh, thank g-g-goodness you’re a-awake.”

This voice is clear, _close_ , and it coaxes Sunny to wake herself up fully. _Instinct_. The last time she heard a stutter that bad was when she awoke to a marker mustache and monocle drawn upon her face and Walker swore he had nothing to do with it.

The doodles may have been his handiwork back then, but the dried blood and crude eye bandage she’s awoken to now are not.

Sitting up proves a challenge and the world spins when Sunny tries.

But Walker is by her side, one strong hand on her back that guides her upright, rests her against his shoulder, while the other pushes a bowl of lukewarm water at her— _a dog bowl_.

 _Jacob Seed_.

Sunny drinks the water down like a dying man in the desert and, with each drop, the world appears a little clearer.

It’s impossible to pinpoint exactly where she is given the sparsity of her surroundings, but she knows this isn’t the Grandview Hotel. She’s past that point in her training. It’s one of Jacob’s many compounds. She and Walker are in a cage, _prisoners_.

How did _Walker_ end up here?

Sunny’s mind spins, searching for the answer, but she can’t get any traction.

She’s _parched_.

 _Dying_.

In her greed most of the water winds up spilling down her chin, but even just the feeling of it against her skin provides some rejuvenation.

“They want you to be _strong_ ,” comes a new voice, a familiar voice to Sunny’s ears, but not so familiar that it bears a name past the desperation that turns her feral beneath the warmth and kindness of Walker’s comforting hand. “One of you _will_ be strong.”

This time the groan comes from Walker. “N-n-not a-again…”

The bowl falls from Sunny’s shaking hands the moment Walker lets it go and the loud clatter catches both men off guard. When the man outside the bars turns to face her, Sunny finds his name.

It’s Deputy Pratt.

A loud grating noise echoes across the yard then, the opening of a large gate, and everyone scatters except for Sunny.

Sunny bumbles around on her hands and knees in a state of delirium.

“W-wait—” she rasps, pleading after the deputy. She wraps her hands around the bars in an effort to remove some of the pressure from her bum knee. “—I don’t understand.”

But the person who kneels down before her is not Deputy Pratt.

It’s Joseph Seed.

His sobering blue eyes enchant her just long enough that he’s able to close his hands around hers on the bars, holding her firmly into place even as the realisation kicks in and she begins to struggle. The sharp pain in her leg forces her into submission.

Joseph never stops smiling.

“I know you’re in pain,” he murmurs with gentle understanding, but his grip is vice-like. “The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh, hm? But you’re not the only one to be tested. Did you know that I had a wife?”

 _No_ , Sunny wants to say, but the word won’t come.

Between the slow starvation of her own body and the renewed bleeding in her right knee, Sunny feels woozy. Faint. The world around her shifts in and out of focus as Joseph speaks _at_ her, the words little more than a distant buzz.

 _Shoo, fly, shoo_ —

Sunny convinces herself for a moment that he’s no longer holding her hands with malice, but compassion and that he’s looking right into her eye as he speaks, intimate and with complete conviction. 

The world swims like an ink bleed, but Joseph’s face maintains perfect clarity. 

_He_ becomes all that remains.

“… they put me in a room with this little pink bundle, stuffed with tubes, and they said I had to be strong because my little girl was going to _live_ …”

It’s impossible to discern if Joseph is trying to teach her a valuable life lesson through his story or offer her a stern warning about what’s to come if she continues down the warpath Jacob’s started her on, but in that moment she _wants_ to hear him.

She needs to hear _something_.

To _focus_.

“… and all she had in the world was _me_. A nobody from nowhere, with nothing. In that moment, I knew that God was testing me. He was laying out a path before me and all I had to do was choose.”

“Abraham…” Sunny feels herself mumble, distant and wary.

“That’s right,” Joseph says and he leans into the bars, so close that their foreheads touch. He allows himself to rest against her there and she doesn’t protest. “I put my hand on my little girl’s head and I leaned in and I could smell…”

It would be so easy to hand over her weapons and surrender if he just gave her a _reason_.

Sunny is so tired of the fighting.

Tired of the _pain_.

“We prayed together. Prayed for wisdom. Prayed for strength… and then I knew. I heard God’s plan for me. I took my fingers and put them on that little plastic tube that was taped to her angelic face and I pinched it shut. And after a little while, her legs began to kick and kick… and then nothing. Stillness. _Release_.”

But he pulls the rug right out from under her.

That’s when Sunny draws her head back from the bars, awoken. “You’re delusional—”

“Abraham lifted up his eyes and looked—” Joseph quotes and Sunny does as he says. In doing so she catches Deputy Pratt’s eyes over Joseph’s shoulder, _knowing_. “—and behold, behind him was a ram, caught in a thicket by his horns.”

In that moment panic strikes and Sunny fights back against Joseph with all of the strength she can muster. He can smell the fear on her now, see it flash across her eye like lightning, but his hold on her hands is ferocious. She squirms helplessly, aimlessly, _desperately_.

The fear is undiluted.

Base, _raw_.

 _Human_.

“The Lord giveth and the Lord… taketh,” Joseph repeats, slowly, methodically. “ _Pain_. _Sacrifice_. These are all part of His test. We only have to prove that we can serve God - no matter what He asks.”

And he releases Sunny’s hands at once, allowing her to fall back into her cage, unceremoniously, tired and sore.

What the _fuck_ was that?

Joseph’s words, a thinly veiled threat, repeat over and over like a melody from Jacob’s goddamn music box and Sunny whines. _Pain_. _Sacrifice_. Jacob sees Joseph out of the compound and Sunny’s eye lingers on the deputy, blind, unseeing. _Pain_. _Sacrifice_.

A wave of nausea hits her then, _red_ , and the world becomes a blur.

 _Fight or flight_.

A hand finds purchase on her back, on her shoulder, weaves through her short and sweaty hair in search of her forehead as she heaves. One glance reveals that the stitches in her knee have come open, bleeding, _filthy_.

“S-she’s burning u-up,” Walker begs to whoever will listen. “P-p-please, she n-needs to see a d-d-doctor before the l-leg—”

But the deputy stands stoically outside of the cage and warns, “She _must_ become strong.”


End file.
